Böcker av Adolf Harnack

Frontmatter -- Augustins Konfessionen

Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930) is recognized as one of the outstanding church historians of his day. He was Professor of Church History successively in the universities of Leipzig, Giessen, Marburg, and Berlin. His great work, A History of Dogma, has exerted an important influence upon modern theological study. Other titles translated into English include A History of the Expansion of Christianity, The Apostles Creed, and The Acts of the Apostles.

Die seit 1925 erscheinenden Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte bilden eine der traditionsreichsten historischen Buchreihen im deutschsprachigen Raum. Sie enthalten Forschungen zur Kirchen- und Dogmengeschichte des Christentums aller Epochen, veroffentlichen aber auch Arbeiten aus verwandten Disziplinen wie beispielsweise der Archaologie, Kunstgeschichte oder Literaturwissenschaft. Kennzeichnend fur die Reihe ist der durchgangige Anspruch, historisch-methodische Prazision mit systematischen Kontextualisierungen des jeweiligen Gegenstandes zu verbinden. In jungerer Zeit erscheinen verstarkt Arbeiten zu Themen einer Kultur- und Ideengeschichte des Christentums in einem methodisch offenen christentumsgeschichtlichen Horizont.

From the author's Preface: ...The root of the organization of the Church is the proclamation of the Word of God. The Word of God took the form of a Gospel. In the Christian preaching at a very early period the Trinitarian Confession came to the front and gave the new religion its distinctive stamp. These were the strongest motive forces in the formative period of the Church. Yet we look in vain in theological literature for monographs in which their origin, their original meaning, and their development are made clear. This noticeable gap I have sought to fill, confining myself, as regards the Trinitarian Confession, to showing the motive which led at a very early period to a bipartite or tripartite formula. The result of the investigations into 'Gospel' will be to show that on this most important point also the Christian religion displayed from the beginning the wonderful many-sidedness, elasticity, and capacity for development which is the presupposition of its universality.